Repsol has received approval from Canadian regulators to begin exporting liquefied natural gas (LNG) from its Canaport import facility.
The National Energy Board of Canada granted a 25-year permit to import as much as 312 billion cubic feet of natural gas per year by pipeline from the US and western Canada.
It will then be converted to six million metric tons of LNG at a new on-site facility.
The project is one of four LNG export terminals proposed in Canada aimed at shipping North American natural gas to markets overseas.
Canada’s energy regulator has acknowledged the deluge of recent applications but also indicated it was unlikely all would survive.
In its proposal, Repsol downplayed concerns about supply, saying it was “evaluating the prospects of sourcing feed gas supply from Western Canada and/or the United States.”
But only one pipeline, Spectra’s Maritimes & Northeast (M&NP), currently connects the region with the vast Marcellus shale gas deposit beneath Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia.
Recent proposals to build pipelines through the US Northeast have met resistance from local environmentalists.
Canaport was built in 2009 to supply the Canadian and US markets, but the shale boom in the United States has since left it underused.
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